The Paperboy 2012

Mary Corliss, TIME Magazine: All the actors rise or bend to the challenge, giving juicy performances and seemingly having a fine old time. Read more

Glenn Kenny, MSN Movies: I'll give this to The Paperboy: It's never boring. Read more

A.O. Scott, New York Times: It is by turns lurid, humid, florid, languid and stupid, but it is pretty much all id all the time. Read more

Rex Reed, New York Observer: You start squirming early and end up feeling you desperately need a bath. Read more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: It's a movie that seems to have a mild form of heatstroke: it's blurry, as if filmed long ago, and feverish, and the story wanders all over the place as if lost in a bayou. When it's over, you want to wipe your brow. Read more

Scott Tobias, AV Club: The most repugnant and inept movie to be inexplicably treated like high art since...whaddaya know, since Precious (Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire), the last film directed by Lee Daniels. Read more

Nathan Rabin, AV Club: Why is The Paperboy so bizarrely dull? It's as if the filmmakers combined 18 different kinds of scalding-hot peppers, yet inexplicably emerged with oatmeal. Read more

Wesley Morris, Boston Globe: This is just the sort of movie certain people are hoping to see when they go to the movies but would never say they go to the movies for. Read more

Amy Nicholson, Boxoffice Magazine: Daniels is a nutcase and almost definitely a perv. But he's gifted at getting actors to drop their guards and commit to nonsense. Read more

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader: The movie curls back and forth as sinuously as a snake through the bayou, tracing the fine line between desire and degradation. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: It's errant camp, which has the effect of undermining our involvement in the mystery. Read more

Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post: Yes, it's a dizzying stew set to boil. Read more

Stephanie Zacharek, Film.com: The Paperboy doesn't hold together as a sensible piece of work. But as an insensible piece of work, it's pretty jaw-dropping. Read more

Todd McCarthy, Hollywood Reporter: This is a tale of murder, idealistic journalism, warped sexual desires, a slipshod legal system and inbred backwater types hostile to outsiders. Read more

Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times: There is so much grit in Kidman and McConaughey's performances, it's a lot for Efron to stand up to, but he does a good job of giving Jack a cocky innocence that is disarming. Read more

Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald: This one has it all: sex, violence, torture, incest, jellyfish attacks, telekinetic masturbation, Nicole Kidman peeing on Zac Efron and a gator gutted in revolting close-up. Read more

Rafer Guzman, Newsday: "The Paperboy" is one of those rare examples where you might wish the movie was less faithful to the book. Read more

David Denby, New Yorker: It's a good story about people who are not what they seem, about identity wavering in the heat-a true swamp tale-but the movie is messily ineffective. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: Simple ugly trash. Read more

Scott Tobias, NPR: Some of The Paperboy's missteps would be forgivable if Daniels delivered them with any conviction, but he doesn't seem capable of it. Read more

Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News: There is so much sweaty, gum-smackin', Southern-accented *acting* going on, you'd applaud if you weren't appalled. Read more

Kyle Smith, New York Post: 'The Paperboy" can't decide whether to be an unfunny sex comedy, a half-hearted detective story or a woeful race drama - so it decides to be all three ... Read more

Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: The Paperboy is over-the-top every which way you look. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: The movie as a whole is a rather grim, dismal experience where the elements never quite gel. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: "The Paperboy" is great trash, and as Pauline Kael told us, the movies are so seldom great art that if we can't appreciate great trash, we might as well not go at all. Read more

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: This hot mess got booed by the snobs at Cannes, but there's no denying its profane energy. Read more

Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com: Most of the acting in "The Paperboy" is actually pretty restrained, which helps you adjust to all the alligator guts, swamp water and naked flesh. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: The movie is definitely a mess. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: "The Paperboy" suggests something Tennessee Williams might have come up with, if he didn't know how to string together a plot. Read more

Jon Frosch, The Atlantic: Lurid, touching, and not quite like anything I've ever seen. Read more

Rick Groen, Globe and Mail: The Paperboy is southern Gothic wallowing in the swamp of low camp. And if the wallowing were deliberate, this might have been hugely funny. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: The Paperboy bears some promise as a good-bad movie, but it unfolds as a bad-bad one. Read more

Alonso Duralde, TheWrap: Ludicrously obsessed with sex to often laughable extremes, it's the rare film that can be described as "horny." Read more

Dave Calhoun, Time Out: 'The Paperboy' just feels inept - with the odd, fun moment of bite-your-tongue high camp emerging from the chaos. Read more

Eric Hynes, Time Out: Merely, if spiritedly, profane. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: Daniels' deft adaptation of Pete Dexter's 1996 novel is even more disturbing on screen than on the page. It's a Southern Gothic noir thriller with a terrific ensemble cast. Read more

Jonathan Kiefer, Village Voice: Sometimes hot messiness has its charms. Read more

Michael O'Sullivan, Washington Post: The entire cast of "The Paperboy" glistens with a golden sheen, as if they've been sprayed with Pam cooking oil. Read more